Structure of superbainite. Inset is a same-scale image of a carbon nanotube. [1]

According to archaeologists, the Iron Age began in 1300 BC and lasted for around two millennia. Today, steels (alloys of iron and carbon) comprise 95% of global metal consumption and this trend shows no sign of declining.

Glancing at the media, however, one would be forgiven for assuming that steel is now a has-been. We are bombarded with stories of novel materials: carbon nanotubes, metallic glasses, graphene, carbon fibre, nickel superalloys. . . all of which are “stronger than steel”.

“Now we can construct space elevators!” claim the articles. “Let’s build a climbing frame to the moon! We’ll use this stuff to make everything!”

The observant among us, however, will note that most cars, trains and buildings still don’t feature superalloys, metallic glass or magic nanotubes. Neither are they invisible; nor do they fly; nor do they do any of the other things that journalists tend to ‘predict’.

Instead, steels somehow remain the best — and cheapest — materials for the job. Also, they are stronger than steel. This is because ‘steel’ is a vague construct used by sensationalists, with an unspecified strength guaranteed to be less than that of a novel material. Metallurgists rarely refer to ‘steel’, just as the Inuit have fifty words for snow, not one of which is ‘snow’.

The Police Commisioner elections are coming up on Thursday. I want to encourage people to go and cast a ballot. However imperfect the system is, we are privileged to have the vote and we should make use of it.

However, many people think that the PCC elections are a total farce. They don’t want a PCC; they believe the £75 million it’s costing to hold the elections should be spent on, say, front-line policing; they don’t think that the police should be politicised. Even the former Met Commissioner Ian Blair is advocating a boycott. There are major concerns that a record low number of people are going to turn out to vote, meaning that the democratic mandate given to these new PCCs is going to be seriously questionable.

People don’t vote for a variety of reasons: ignorance; apathy; not being on the electoral roll; discontent. Also known as ‘don’t know’; ‘don’t care’; ‘can’t’; ‘won’t’. I expect most people not voting come from columns B and D.

Not knowing about elections is usually difficult, but for this one I have to make an exception. While it has been nice not to have loads of election spam shoved through my letterbox, it has made it trickier to evaluate the candidates. I found a website where you can see all the candidates up for election. It seems to think that a major factor in my decision is which candidate is most active on Twitter, and is rather bland on any other details. The official website is a bit better and of course the candidates’ own websites also give you an idea of what they’re vaguely in favour of (“less crime” seems to be the general consensus).

There are also some special gems:

“Like the rest of [UKIP], Paul sees deep unfairness in allowing the European Courts to send British citizens to rough justice abroad whilst allowing known-terrorists to flout deportation back to the Middle East. He believes that the Human Rights Act is not ‘fit for purpose’ and should be fundamentally changed.”

-Paul Bullen, UKIP Candidate

“UKIP wants to see a Commissioner who isn’t tied to any form of ‘party politics’ or ‘party whip’. Paul is, therefore, truly Independent and able to act how you, the law-abiding public, want. ”

Archaeologists in Austria have found evidence that women were metalworkers during the Bronze Age:

The Museum of Ancient History says the grave originates from the Bronze Age, which began more than 5,000 years ago and ended 3,200 years ago.

In a statement on Wednesday, it said that although the pelvic bones were missing, examination of the skull and lower jaw bone shows the skeleton is of a woman.

The museum says tools used to make metal ornaments were also found in the grave northwest of Vienna, leading to the conclusion that it was that of a female fine metal worker.

It says such work had been commonly presumed to be in the male domain.

Perhaps discoveries like this will challenge conventional ideas about the division of labour in ancient societies. Metallurgy and metalworking have been male-dominated subjects for virtually all of time, so it’s interesting to see that women were still involved even at the earlier points in its history. This woman was identified as a metalsmith thanks to the grave goods that were buried with her: an anvil, hammers, flint chisels and some dress jewellery. In fact, it makes a lot of sense that Bronze Age women could be metalworkers. Materials like copper and tin* can be melted by a kiln without needing to pump a lot of excess air to feed the fire. Contrast this with ironworking, which requires a great deal of physical strength to pump air into the fire, and to shape the iron by hammering at arms’ length. When we think about smithing, the picture that comes to mind is a burly blacksmith in a forge, hammering away at a sword. Yet bronze was frequently used to manufacture household items like knives, needles, pins, mirrors, jugs, pots and cauldrons. Women were known to be exceptionally skilled potters. The question is: were they as good with metal as they were with clay, or did pot-making suddenly become mens’ work? Bronze is not particularly difficult to cast or grind and much of the early labour that is classed as womens’ work (cooking, pottery, childrearing, gathering unaccountably pink berries) involved a lot of working with fires and moderate physical activity. If a woman can grind corn, she can grind bronze.

Maybe women were also involved in the discovery of new metals and techniques. Gold was the first metal to be discovered and worked by humans, and early goldsmiths would collect gold nuggets from stream beds. If women did take on the role of gatherer in their societies, it could well have been a woman who found the first gold nugget, while collecting water from a stream or gathering fruit nearby. Meanwhile, archaeologists believe that copper smelting first took place inside pottery kilns (since campfires are not quite hot enough) – another domain of women. Tin and lead are more easily smelted, and this discovery was probably accidental, involving either a campfire or a cooking fire.

There is currently no way to know for sure whether this woman was an outlier even in her time, or whether Bronze Age societies routinely had female as well as male metalworkers. Some iconography does seem to imply that there was a division of labour according to sex but this is only a tiny snapshot of life at the time, and gender-specific artefacts are rare. Much archaeological excavation tends to focus on domestic locations within settlements, whereas typically ‘male’ activities like hunting and metallurgy would have taken place in other areas, so evidence of these practices is less likely to enter the archaeological record. The preconceptions of archaeologists must also be taken into account. It would be interesting to see how often a woman’s skeleton has been excavated, revealing that she was buried with weapons or tools, and the explanation provided was that the burial goods were purely decorative, and unrelated to the woman’s actual occupation. The issue of gender bias in archaeology is not a new problem, and only in the past few decades have archaeologists begun to recognise that this needs to be corrected, by becoming aware of their own inbuilt preconceptions and how these preconceptions might affect their interpretations of ancient life.

*Fun fact: the earliest bronzes were actually alloys of copper and arsenic. Tin came along much later. Unfortunately, the fumes created during the manufacture of arsenical bronze have some unpleasant side effects, one of which is permanent nerve damage. Some people have speculated that this is where the myths of Hephaestus – the lame Smith of the Gods – came from.